MIS K4 inks' performance

[marco_ristuccia]

<p>Hi all,</p>

<p>I would like to share with you my personal findings regarding the performance of the MIS K4 Inks, which I tried on my Epson Stylus Photo R2880 in place of the original Ultrachrome K3 Vivid Magenta inkset.</p>

<p>What I've read from InkSupply is that the MIS K4 inks, besides being archival like the Epson ones, should guarantee an "Improved dot gain, color density, and gamut over Epson inks.". So I wanted to try them together with the refill kit with the hope to spare some money for my future prints.</p>

<p>After installing the MIS inkset into the R2880 I've profiled it on Canson Infinity Baryta Photographie paper with my Colormunki-Photo spectrophotometer.</p>

<p>Then I did some test prints in order to compare them with the same copies made with the Epson K3 inks. It was immediately clear, even by a fast eye inspection, that something was wrong. On the MIS print colors were dull, expecially the more saturated reds and greens. The general impression was of less brilliance and saturation.</p>

<p>As a consequence of those results, I've visually compared my custom MIS profile with the one I've created for the Epson inks (for the same above mentioned paper).</p>

<p>I attach here the results of this comparison (made through the ColorSync utility on my Mac PC). The grey profile is the Epson K3 one, the coloured profile is the MIS K4.</p>

<p>My impressions are fully confirmed by this visual comparison, the MIS custom profile is way narrower than the Epson one. Only on the blue/green area it seems that MIS is a little bit better than Epson.</p>

<p>I've contacted the InkSupply's support on September 5th, they told me that this paper was not tested yet and that they will try it and let me know. They also asked my two custom profiles (MIS and Epson) in order to have something to work on. Until now I've got no final feedback regarding my findings.</p>

<p>Long story short, I'm coming back to Epson inks and will never try anything else again.</p>

<p>Hope this could help some of you no to waste the money that I've thrown away.</p>

<p>Regards.</p>

<p><img src="http://www.marcoristuccia.com/tmp/MIS_K4_vs_Epson_K3vm.jpg" alt="" /><br /> Coloured profile: MIS K4 Inks - Greyed profile: Epson Ultrachrome K3 VM Inks - Paper: Canson Infinity Baryta Photographique</p>

[digitaldog]

<p>Yup, stick with the OEM inks. </p>

[roger_smith4]

<p>They also have dramatically worse permanence. See Aardenburg Imaging: http://www.aardenburg-imaging.com/light-fade-test-results/<br /><br />I did a south-facing window test myself and the MIS inks failed within a year. Prints in dark storage and Epson OEM inks lasted fine.</p>

[marco_ristuccia]

<p>Andrew, Roger,<br>

thank you for your kind feedback.<br>

I'll stick with the Epson inks.<br>

Kind Regards.</p>